


coda générale

by brophigenia



Series: the nutcracker suite [2]
Category: Legacies (TV 2018), The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Coronation, Cunnilingus, Epistolary, F/M, Honeymoon, Married Sex, Oral Sex, Pining, Presents, Queen Caroline and King Klaus, Unprotected Sex, Vaginal Sex, Wedding, this is a holiday gift from me to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27981246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “There is too much to do.” Caroline said, her hair wound in metal curlers and her body wound up in a thick flannel dressing gown.(AKA, Queen Caroline and King Klaus are about to be married and unite their countries alongside themselves. There will be a wedding night.)
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, Nadia Petrova/Lorenzo "Enzo" St. John
Series: the nutcracker suite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049381
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	coda générale

**Author's Note:**

> Cut lyrics from Hamilton, poetry by Pablo Neruda, porn by your bro, Brophigenia

_ doing the best i can  _

_ to get the people that i need.  _

***

“There is too much to do.” Caroline said, her hair wound in metal curlers and her body wound up in a thick flannel dressing gown. It was possibly the least sexy outfit she had ever worn in her life, but Klaus looked at her as if she were the most ravishing creature on earth, as if she were eighteen again, dressed up like a bouquet of flowers, entering a ballroom full of ravenous wolves. 

“And yet,” Klaus replied, impish even distracted, wearing the eyeglasses that he hated but Caroline thought made him look so distinguished, peering down at the papers she’d tossed across their desks at him. Unmarried, they were still chaperoned by two ladies-in-waiting at all times, but they’d long since combined their offices for maximum efficiency in the months leading up to the wedding and coronation. “You bear the weight of the world upon your shoulders as if you were wrought for it out of mithril, my love.” 

The poetics came easily to Klaus, who was more of a Southern gentleman than any she’d ever met, growing up, despite his undeniably Northern heritage. Caroline found it harder to express herself in flowery words; she was a woman of action. She always had been, since she’d been a girl prone to temper tantrums. 

“You’re...” she trailed off on the insult, brow furrowing. Nadia would tut at her about wrinkles if she were here, and not overseeing the decorating of the throne room and ballroom downstairs. “Do you have the…” she waved a hand, trying to come up with the name of the thing she needed as her mind raced, thinking about provisions for their soon-to-be-combined armies and how those provisions might be distributed in a way that would ensure freshness and convenience. 

Klaus passed her what she needed (a map that denoted all the exportable goods of each area in both their countries, alongside seasons and quantity) without delay. She smiled vaguely, still not looking up, and drew her desk lamp closer so she could give her aching eyes a rest. 

“Thank you, Niklaus.” She murmured absently, missing the flush that briefly bloomed on the back of his neck at her words, the flash of his eyes behind their lenses. 

“Anything.” He returned, and bent his own head again to his work. 

***

_ Caroline,  _ the note read, hastily tucked into the gold gilt frame of her vanity mirror, where she’d not be able to miss it as she sat down to let Nadia slather creams all over her face before bed.  _ In my dreams, you are yet clothed in starlight. You outshine the sun. Your skin is of pearls and petals. You are everything. I could devour you and it would still not be enough.  _

It was written in her fiance’s hand- elegant, hasty scrawls that took up too much space. He was not one for cramped shorthand. Still, the note made her blush and wonder which of his brothers had intercepted it in between his bedroom desk and the fireplace. Probably Kol, who knew all too well that Klaus preferred his romantic musings to take the form of spoken words, not committed to ink and paper, indelible. 

He would be with his brothers tonight- Kol and Elijah and young Henrik, who still called her  _ Your Majesty  _ and flushed whenever their paths crossed with such violence that it was a wonder he was left standing with any blood left in the rest of him. He was as tall as his elder brothers, but thin as a beanpole. Klaus teased him mercilessly, but loved him as fiercely as any wolf loved its pup. Tonight was for them to celebrate in the Northern way, drinking and storytelling and gallivanting with their kinsmen and friends. Even Enzo had been recruited for the party. 

Perhaps, Caroline mused as Nadia fussed with tying a protective silk scarf around the mass of pins and curlers in her hair so that she might snatch a few hours’ sleep before the morning meetings, she might write a note back to her beloved. 

Something… just a  _ bit  _ scandalous. Nothing like her vivid  _ (oh  _ so vivid) imaginings late at night when she should be asleep but was not, nightdress hauled up around her neck and sweat gathering  _ everywhere.  _ Nadia always had the smuggest looks the morning after one of those late nights, when Caroline needed to bathe before being seen by anyone who  _ wasn’t  _ a Petrova lady-in-waiting. 

She would not be  _ explicit.  _ Only  _ suggestive.  _

It would work. 

Besides- he ought to know how she felt about his  _ romanticisms.  _ Even if he was not the one who’d endeavored to deliver her this snatch of purple-prose erotica, he’d still put it to the page. She’d be up  _ late  _ thinking about those words. It was only fair that his feathers be ruffled, too. Turnabout, and all that. 

***

_ K- sometimes, when we are sitting at our desks, I think of your hands. I think of your mouth. I think of them when I am alone in my bed, too. I am not a poet- I have no verses. Sue me. I want you. Love, C.  _

“Brother?” Elijah asked, concerned, and not for the first time. 

His concern was not unfair- Klaus thought perhaps that he would have a stroke here and now, sitting in this old hunting lodge two miles from the castle proper with his brothers, his friends, his  _ fiance’s father.  _ Old Dowager King-Consort Bill was too drunk to see his hand in front of his own face, but  _ still.  _

He needed to burn the note. It had been delivered by that fox-faced lady of hers, the Petrova that Klaus did not strictly trust for virtue of her last name and the dark amusement always in her eyes. She’d appeared fearlessly in the hall of drunken men wearing a cloak blacker than the night, delivering to him the note folded so  _ casually.  _

_ K.M.,  _ it was addressed to. So informal that he shivered just  _ reading  _ it. 

He was going to have some kind of fit. He was harder in his leather hunting breeches than he’d been the first time he and his brothers had snuck off from Finn’s watchful eye to see the  _ dancers _ in a nearby establishment of ill-repute. He felt like a green boy all over again, not the man he’d become. 

Each passing day in the engagement had been thus- he worked himself to the bone alongside Caroline, who was his queen in feeling but would soon be his queen in  _ fact,  _ often late into the night. They’d combined their offices almost as soon as they’d announced their engagement, when they’d both taken up residence at the castle closest to the border between their two nations with all their respective courts. What had been two rooms had been turned into one, and their desks dominated the center of the large room, pressed together so that they faced each other across several feet of sturdy mahogany. 

How often he’d thought of taking her there, one of those  _ late  _ nights when their chaperones were asleep over their embroidery hoops by the fire. How quiet he imagined being, so as not to disturb them, drawing up Caroline’s skirts and drawing down his own breeks until he could  _ fuck  _ her, hard enough that he’d have to lay a hand over her mouth to muffle the noises she’d no doubt make. He’d smother his own groans into her neck, careful not to bite, though it came naturally to him, the Wolf King of the North. 

“Nik!” Klaus snapped from his trance at the clap of Kol’s hand upon his shoulder, automatically grasping his brother by that hand in order to twist his offending arm up behind his back. While his trickster brother cried  _ uncle! uncle!  _ and Dowager King Consort Bill slurred something about  _ shirtless wrestling,  _ Klaus tucked the note into his jerkin, beneath his shirt, up against his heart. It was the closest he’d come to having Caroline’s touch upon any skin not bared by the confining clothing favored by both of their people. He imagined the ink seeping from the page, staining him with her wanting the way he soon wished to be marked by her desire from nose to chin,  _ dripping.  _

His  _ queen.  _

Tomorrow, his  _ wife.  _

Klaus released Kol and tossed him carelessly at the other men, wandering off to sit by the fire and gaze into it, rubbing his palm restlessly over his heart where the note hid. 

Elijah watched with a wry little smile, wondering how much of his pride came from being a dutiful advisor to his king and how much came from being the man who had raised this young man, had sparred with him and argued with him and loved him recklessly since they were both children. 

***

“I still don’t see why he has to pick out your  _ wedding gown,  _ Care.” Elena said from around a mouthful of pins, heavily pregnant and trying to arrange her hair artfully enough that it would hide the fact that she hadn’t slept in almost a week because of the wails of her infant son, Damon Salvatore II. 

“It’s their  _ thing,  _ Elena.” Bonnie pointed out, arrayed in her Guild Master robes, serene as anything as she watched her two best friends get ready. 

Caroline had been in meetings all morning; finally, Elena had come to pull her away, glaring with all the force of a mother bear at every councillor who tried to protest their queen’s departure, even on the day of her wedding. 

“I still haven’t gotten to meet with the Miller Guild,” Caroline told Liv, one of her younger ladies, and arguably the least silly of all them. She loved each of her ladies-in-waiting, but none of them were Nadia. Liv, however, came close. If Nadia was her right hand, Liv was  _ Nadia’s  _ right hand. “That will have to be postponed, unless you can find someone suitable from my advisors to meet with them in proxy, with Nadia in attendance, of course.” 

Nadia had unwound the rollers from her hair and made foreign sounds of hawkish satisfaction, clucking as she drew a silver-backed brush through the golden locks until the curls became waves that shone like real gold, as bright as the settings and spires on her formal crown. That done, she’d whisked off again to oversee last-minute details, leaving Liv to listen to Caroline’s last minute fretting. 

“But her  _ wedding dress,  _ Bon?” Elena stressed, still skeptical. That was fine- just because  _ her  _ husband could not be counted upon to tell the difference between brown, black, and navy and  _ certainly  _ never commissioned her any custom-made ballgowns did not mean that  _ all  _ men were so unfortunately dim in matters of couture. Caroline was tuning her out. 

There was nothing but this- allowing Liv to brush blush over her cheeks, to rouge her lips, to fasten onto her all the crown jewels worn by every bride in Caroline’s family for the last three hundred years. Sapphires and diamonds in her ears, around her throat, spanning both her wrists. 

Beyond the jewels, Caroline still sat in her underclothes, basque and petticoat and stockings. Stifled, breathing  _ up  _ instead of  _ out.  _

When the knock upon the door came, it was Enzo on the other side, looking much worse for wear since his adventure last night with the king and the king’s men. Still, he sketched the courtliest of bows to Caroline after dodging both Liv and Bonnie to make it inside. 

His hands were empty, and Caroline raised one eyebrow, again ignoring Elena’s near-panicked murmuring about the  _ lack _ of wedding gown. 

“Your  _ Illustrious  _ Majesty.” Enzo began, and  _ oh  _ she loved her soon-to-be-husband even as she wanted to  _ strangle  _ him, beneath her calm facade. “I am afraid that the gown will not fit in the door.” 

_ Klaus,  _ she thought to herself, trying to persuade her left eye not to begin twitching, as Liv had to oversee the opening of the second panel door to her chambers, widening the entranceway until the gown could then be wheeled in upon a mannequin, covered in a truly  _ massive  _ sheet,  _ you had best be prepared for what I am going to do to you tonight.  _

***

She was more gown than woman- thousands of yards of satin-hemmed tulle frothing out from her waist to create a wave of seafoam all around her, veil trailing along the back of her skirt until it was indistinguishable. He’d chosen white, of course; white, with a bodice that fitted perfectly to his bride’s measurements, a neckline that framed the natural curves of her breasts, everything done in such deliberate detail that it could not have been by accident. It was a gown unlike any other in either of their kingdoms, and great news for the Lacemakers Guild, who would no doubt receive plenty of business from copycat brides after the Royal Wedding Dress had been breathlessly described in every gossip salon from here to the Eastern coast. 

_ That  _ would please Caroline, later. The redistribution of wealth from the aristocracy to the artisans and markets. The years of war and uncertainty had been all about sparse bolts of fabric that clung close to the body, all the efforts of the Weavers going towards wool and broadcloth to clothe the army. They’d been lean years. 

_ There will be no more of that,  _ Klaus meant to promise with this dress. This dress, that could clothe half the wedding party if it weren’t so busy making Caroline look like a confection of spun sugar and snowflakes, sailing across the marble floors. 

At the top of the grand staircase Caroline appeared, floating down each velvet-carpeted step with all the grace she’d learned as a very small girl, books stacked high on her young head. 

She’d always been able to manage a higher stack than Elena, who was so beautiful and serene and  _ elegant.  _ Caroline had felt like a hurricane, barely-controlled, during their shared deportment lessons. 

Tonight she did not compare herself to anyone. She imagined her mother gazing on her with respect. She met her father’s eyes and smiled serenely. He did not even attempt to ask if she’d like to be escorted down the aisle, given away. 

_ There was no Queen in the South but one named Forbes, _ as Klaus had proclaimed on a battlefield through his younger brother’s mouth. 

Who could give away a queen? 

No one. Caroline was giving  _ herself  _ away. 

She was losing nothing, only gaining. A king. 

She was marrying her  _ king.  _

***

Klaus knelt at her feet, looking up at her, and Caroline for a moment was struck nearly dumb by all of it, the power of her stance here, holding the sword that was custom in Northern coronations. She could sweep his head from his shoulders and  _ no one  _ could stop her. 

She did not  _ want  _ to— the thought made her nauseous even as she was  _ flying  _ with it, high on the joy and the terror, her  _ husband  _ kneeling and swearing fealty to her. 

To  _ her.  _

“I swear on my life and all that I hold to put the interests of our kingdoms at the forefront of all my thoughts and actions. I will not jeopardize the lives and liberties of our people. I will bow to none but my queen, my equal in all things.” Klaus said, loud enough to be heard all through the throne room. His words crumbled something hard that lived always in her chest, some last measure of mistrust. 

“Rise, Niklaus,” she commanded in a reverberating voice, touching each of his shoulders with the flat of the heavy blade. “Rise and be King Niklaus of the Northern and Southern kingdoms.” 

He did, slow and measured, graceful as a jungle cat, accepting the scepter he was passed in the same way Caroline had accepted the sword— bemused and hot-eyed. 

_ Oh,  _ she couldn’t stand any more of this, any more of breathing so close to him with all these stifling layers of clothing between their skin. 

Still, Caroline sank down to kneel before her husband, gazing up at him from a sea of tulle like waves lapping at her hips. 

Briefly, unnoticeable to anyone else, Caroline flickered her gaze to the crotch of his fine breeches and then back up, tongue darting out to touch her bottom lip in a move both demure and daring. 

Klaus’ knuckles tightened on his scepter.  _ Her  _ scepter. His eyes matched the sapphires adorning it, the same that wreathed her limbs, set in diamonds. 

_ Gleaming.  _

“I swear...” Caroline began, in the same way he had, before, for everyone to hear.  _ Tonight,  _ her eyes promised hotly, for only Klaus to understand. 

***

And so they were married, and equals, and  _ alone—  _ Klaus carried her from the ballroom to the cheers of all their assembled guests, himself half-lost in her gown. She’d not been able to contain her laughter, peals of it following them down the halls and up the staircase until he’d been helpless but to laugh too, the sound like sandpaper on velvet. Rich, and throaty. 

“Oh!” Caroline sighed as Klaus undid the hook and eye closures of her basque, freeing her ribs and lungs and allowing her organs to start settling again into their rightful place. The dress was around her ankles, and Klaus tossed the basque aside carelessly as he swept her off her feet, carrying her to the bed, trodding upon her skirts with his booted feet. “Oh, I’m so tired.” She said, eyes closing, sighing again when her aching body met the soft mattress. 

“Not  _ too _ tired, I hope.” Klaus murmured, pressing his clothed body all along hers, only covered by a thin satin chemise. She kept her eyes closed and spread her thighs welcomingly, letting him between them. He made no move to touch her with his hands, nosing his way into her stiff curls. They looked lovely, but Klaus loved her hair best when it was free of product, curling recklessly over her shoulders as she worked. 

Again, as he had once on a balcony, as he did in stolen moments in alcoves, Klaus quoted poetry.  _ “What am I to do, love, loved one?”  _

Caroline breathed in, air expanding her lungs  _ out,  _ chest to chest, belly to belly, hip to hip with him. “Did you get my note?” She whispered almost soundlessly, wishing to be brave and fearless but realizing that she did not need to be, here in this room, in her bed, with her  _ husband.  _

Klaus groaned soundlessly, his hips pressing down until she could  _ feel him,  _ straining, hard against her core. 

“My hands, then?” He rasped, kissing her throat distractingly. His stubble scraped against her skin, though he’d shaved cleanly this morning for the ceremonies. “Or my mouth?” 

There was a darkness inside of Caroline— the same way she’d felt startled to realize he could decapitate him earlier, she realized that she could order him to do  _ anything  _ and he would obey. She was hungry, inside, still the infant squalling for  _ more,  _ the girl raging against her mother’s indifference, the queen conquering. 

“Your  _ mouth,”  _ she half-snarled, more of a wolf than Klaus was in that moment, tearing at the fastenings of his military regalia, buttons and badges and medals going flying. “Klaus,  _ Klaus—“  _

“Say my name  _ properly,”  _ he growled back, obliging her by stripping off his jacket, his shirtsleeves, leaving him bare to her eyes. She’d never seen him like this, bare-chested and heaving, tattooed in the way of Northerners,  _ savage.  _ He shouldered her thighs further apart, clenched his fist into the silk covering her stomach until she was naked from the waist down. 

_ So  _ naked, wet enough that she could smell herself, toes already curling just from the hellish brightness of his eyes above her mound and his breath against her. “Caroline.” He said, startling her from her reverie. She felt drunker than she’d ever been in her  _ life,  _ though she’d not even had the first sip of champagne. “My name, love.” Now he was  _ purring,  _ hypnotic. 

“Niklaus,” she moaned, tangling both her hands into his lush russet hair.  _ “Do something.”  _

She did not have to ask him twice— he dove in, mouth hungrily suckling at where her ache was the most fearsome, nose bumping against her, tongue pressing  _ in, in, in  _ to where she’d before only had her own fingers, slender and inquisitive, to slake the need that daily closeness had only made  _ worse  _ in the months since they’d united their households here at the Castle du Orleans. 

She clamped her thighs around his head, tossed back her own, curls crunching against the pillows, unable to look away from the sight of Klaus between her legs,  _ eating  _ her as if she were the most delectable dessert in the world. 

Her release was not a quick thing; it had never been, by herself, and this did not change with Klaus orchestrating her pleasure. Her mind still raced, her limbs still jerked, everything  _ clenched.  _ It was not quicker but it was  _ more,  _ more satisfying than frigging herself breathless after an afternoon spent hunting with Klaus and their chaperones, or sitting across the desk from Klaus as they read over trade proposals together. Sometimes she’d not even made it to bed, only far enough to press her back against the door and haul her skirts up shamelessly, praying no one would come knocking before she was done, biting the inside of her cheek bloody to stifle her cries, ruthless in the speed and pressure she applied to herself. 

“Fuck,  _ Nik,  _ Nik, please—“ Caroline spat, screwing her eyes shut, tightening her grip on his hair, and then she was  _ coming,  _ like a lightning strike. 

***

“What are you doing?” Enzo asked, coming upon a strange scene— Nadia Petrova in her court finery, all scarlet silk and spills of spiderweb lace, occupying an unfamiliar post in a rocking chair outside the queen’s chambers. She had a book in hand, something old and probably about the most effective ways to have your political opponents murdered without it being traced back to you. 

“What are  _ you  _ doing, St. John?” She retorted, not looking up, not pausing in her gentle rocking. She turned the page with a rustle. A watchman, dedicated to her task. 

“Is Her Majesty planning to murder him mid-Paphian jig?” Enzo made his tone light, but still burned with curiosity. 

Of course, he  _ often _ burned around the  _ illustrious _ Lady Petrova. 

“You are disgusting,” she responded, and still she did not look up. He noticed, however, that she was no longer reading, only staring at the book with a faraway expression. 

He waited. 

“Her Majesty will not be disturbed.” Nadia finally murmured, and looked up to meet his eyes with her own, black as pitch, fringed in lashes like paintbrushes. 

She loved the queen. She could’ve been queen of any surrounding kingdom with her name, beauty, and brilliance. Still, she stayed with Caroline. Bound to her. 

“Alright,” Enzo said, and sat down with his back against the wall at Nadia’s side, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. He could hear the creak of the rocking chair, the rustle of her book, the muffled sounds from inside the royal bedchamber. 

After a moment, Nadia rested her hand atop his head, stroking over his hair. 

It felt good. He was no monk, but it had been a long time since a woman had touched him with no ulterior purpose. 

They would stay here until the morning, until the queen was ready to re-emerge and be queen again. Until the honeymoon was over (only a night to love recklessly, with no responsibilities) and the real work would begin. 

***

“Caroline,” Klaus said, plunging inside her where she was bonfire-burning and ocean-wet, tight as a vice and  _ trembling  _ around his cock. He felt shocked by it, overwhelmed. Where the others had visited more than the  _ dancers _ in Wintertown, Klaus had been the bastard son of the queen. He had known better than to risk making  _ more  _ bastards. 

Now, though, with his  _ wife _ beneath him, Klaus was risking nothing but the creation of  _ heirs.  _ A prince or princess, with Caroline’s smile and her golden hair. 

“Klaus,” Caroline whispered, hot, looking at him like she could  _ consume _ him. “Niklaus, Nik,  _ Klaus,”  _ there was possession in every syllable.  _ You are mine,  _ she was saying with her eyes and her grasping fingers and clenching cunt. 

“I would  _ kill  _ for you,” he groaned, and buried his face in her throat, wishing he could suck messy bruises into the skin there for  _ everyone _ to see. Knowing that he  _ couldn’t.  _ His hips stirred restlessly against hers. “I would  _ die  _ for you.” 

“Klaus!” Caroline repeated, her voice going high and reedy, thighs tightening around his hips.  _ Oh,  _ and everything  _ else  _ tightening too, like she couldn’t help herself in the same way he couldn’t help himself. 

“Everything I’ve done, everything that’s happened to me—“ Klaus panted, finally giving in to his baser desires and  _ snapping _ his hips, thrusting with all the power in his thighs and buttocks  _ in,  _ pulling  _ out,  _ hands clenching on the mattress and in the sheets so he wouldn’t clench them on Caroline’s ivory skin. “I would do it again, all of it, if I could just have  _ this.”  _ He stopped thrusting, overwhelmed. It was all too much. He would unman himself too-soon, prove himself a failure. She’d come under his tongue once, become a writhing banshee with the voice of an angel, but it wasn’t enough. 

Nothing would ever be  _ enough.  _

“Klaus, I love you.” Caroline bit out, and yanked his hair until he was staring her in the eyes.  _ “Fuck  _ me.” She demanded then, and fought like a bobcat until she could roll them over, him dumb with the desire that roiled in his gut at her words. Astride his hips, she  _ rocked,  _ faster and faster, fingers falling frantically to her clit so she could try to make it  _ better,  _ but it was all so  _ much.  _ The stretch of her core and the lanquidity of one orgasm already on her limbs, the exhaustion of the day, all of it. 

Caroline gave a frustrated keen; Klaus rolled them back over and again surrendered his body, his heart, his pride to her. Again he used all the strength in his body to thrust, and rubbed circles where they would be most appreciated, arm awkwardly trapped between them and wrist aching terribly from the angle. 

Next time, he thought, wonderingly, he’d have to— he’d— he was  _ done,  _ feeling like he’d been stabbed in the gut by fire-hot pleasure, turned to stone. 

Caroline took over touching herself, using the last bit of her strength to get herself there, too, so she could cling to Klaus as tightly as he clung to her. Like she was a rock, and he was a man adrift at sea. 

“I love you.” Klaus said, rolling off of her and onto his back, both of them gasping, breathless, drenched in sweat. “Bloody hell, I’m so tired.” 

She snorted, throwing an elbow over her eyes. “How long do you think we have?” 

His pocketwatch was in his hastily-discarded pile of clothing. Still, Klaus squinted across the room as if he might suddenly be able to see through wool and leather and velvet. 

“Long enough to sleep a while, and then do it again.” He hazarded, hopeful. Caroline snored softly in response. 

They had meetings in the morning. There was still so much work to do. 

***

_ look around, look around  _

_ at how lucky we are to be alive right now.  _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
